Liverpool’s woes pile up after another home defeat

They say the rain brings out the gloomier side of our nature as human beings and, amidst the rain falling steadily over Anfield, the gloom deepened that much further as Fiorentina came from behind to seal victory in the final minute.
This was the third occasion in this campaign Liverpool have conceded costly late goals and the excuse of

Owen hat-trick confirms United as Group Winners

An injury-decimated United clinically beat a wasteful Wolfsburg in Germany to top their Group. A hat-trick from Michael owen gave United's reserve side a comfortable victory despite the home side wasting some good opportunities in the air against a makeshift defence of Carrick and Fletcher. Carrick found it hard to handle the physical presence of Wolfsburg's 6'4" striker, Edin Dzeko, who headed a well-deserved equalizer on 56 minutes. But it was United's threat on the counter, with Gabriel Obertan tricking the Wolfsburg defence, beating three defenders to set up the second for Owen in the 83rd minute, which Wolfsburg could do nothing about. Victory was sealed in injury time after owen clipped over the Wolfsburg 'keeper following a counter attack from a goal-mouth scramble in United's box.
With a crippling injury list, the team selection may not be such a terrifying prospect for Ferguson after this convincing victory away from home.

Graham Matheson

Liverpool not very hungry in Hungary

Liverpool stutter to a 1-0 win over Hungarian champions, Debrecen. Needing Lyon to produce a result in Florence because of terrible results in games against both teams, is no way to compete in a campaign but they were off to a great start after just 4 minutes, when a well-worked corner fell to Ngog to tap in at the far post. The next fifteen minutes saw Liverpool press and pass the ball quickly retaining possession well and carve out chances but found the Debrecen goalkeeper, Poleksic, in fine form, stopping Ngog and Steven Gerrard. The remainder of the first half was laboured from Liverpool, whose midfield of Lucas-Mascherano intent on slowing down the game and a far-from-fit Aurelio providing no attacking threat from the left, produced very little of quality.
The second half produced more of the same with an obvious lack of quality passes and vision from central midfield despite the willing running of the ever-improving Ngog. Ever-improving yes, but can they really rely on an untested and unproven youngster to carry all of the goalscoring threat? As the game wore on it became more-and-more obvious that the attacking threat and vision of Acquilani was desperately needed in place of the, at times, absent Lucas but it took Benitez until the 75th minutes to make a subsitution, bringing on Benayoun for an obviously tired Ngog. The Debrecen defence proved admirably capable of stopping the predictable Liverpool attack, with the only moment of tension coming with a Steven Gerrard burst into the burst that Meszaros was able to brilliantly block.
For all of Liverpool's attacking impotency, Debrecen found themselves threatening more and more as the game wore on with the main threat coming from the sublime touches of Rudolf. Liverpool hearts were in their mouths in stoppage time as the substitute, Coulibaly, hitting tamely straight at Reina from six yards.
As it was, Lyon could not produce the result Liverpool so desperately needed with a first half penalty enough to see Fiorentina through at Liverpool's expense.

Crunch time for Liverpool

Liverpool are busy preparing for their important match in Hungary tonight with most of the questions from journalists being, "Will you be keeping a close eye on the score in Italy?" Jamie Carragher and Rafa Benitez have been careful in answering these questions stating the obvious, "We'll concentrate on our doing our job." Yet Carragher, the epitomy of Liverpool's never-say-die attitude, appears to be resigned to the possibility of Europa League football, "We're still focused and believe we can go through in the Champions League. If not,